Spec me a new Laptop People!

[TezzRexx]

Also the upgrade to 10 is free for 7 and 8 users right?

Yup, but only for the first year of Win10's release.

[TezzRexx]

Depending on how much you want to pay, you could get a MacBook Pro for around £400-500 quid, install Parallels and then run whatever OS you want

[TezzRexx]

Might be of interest:

Acer E5-471P intel core i3, 4gb RAM, 500gb HD, 14" touchscreen laptop for £269.99 + £10 voucher @ ARGOS

[Dog Pants]

I was gawping at http://www.ebuyer.com/660265-lenovo-ess ... op-mcc2huk - which has £50 of cashback on it too. Anyone technically minded want to have a quick nose at the specs and tell me if I'd be throwing money away?

Edit: Christ, there's three versions of that laptop with the same name, but different processors and optical drives. My head hurts.

Might not want to go for that Lenovo, unless you love the idea of it coming pre-installed with adware and redirecting all your secure requests to a gash certificate authority:



Yeah, I'm sure Superfish are a legit CA.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Indeed, that isn't good.

[buzzmong]

It's actually spyware, lovely: http://hackaday.com/2015/02/19/lenovo-s ... aks-https/

[Dog Pants]

Adware is just spyware with PR.

[TezzRexx]

What the actual fuck?! That's bad. Hope they get in big trouble over that.

[Dog Pants]

Their response has been to say 'we don't want to get into an argument with the security guys' and 'these are just theoretical risks.'

Yeah, Lenovo. Just like leaving your keys in your car is a theoretical risk, until someone nicks it.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Incidentally, Microsoft has taken the slightly odd step of updating MSE to block that shit, rather than letting it slide as is historical for questionable pre-installed-user-experience-borderline-malware.

[Dog Pants]

Ooh, maybe they'll block AOL* next.



*Yeah, I was tempted to say Windows 8

[Mr. Johnson]

Mrs. J's Dell laptop is in desperate need of replacement and we've narrowed it down to either another dell or a Toshiba. I don't really know anything about laptops but hers needs to be good at media and the occasional word processing. The budget's around £300, I know that's not much but we've got to make it work somehow.

[TezzRexx]

What kind of Media? Editing music/videos or Photoshop?

[Mr. Johnson]

Sorry, that wasn't very specific. I meant just watching videos.

[fabyak]

Mrs Fab has been very pleased with her Dell 3542 (Got the slightly more powerful version than the one below). Although it comes with 8.1 it will also run Windows 7 which was a must for us, reading through the reviews (I tend to go for the negative ones first) and most people are either bitching because they broke it, were demanding a really powerful machine for the low cost, didn't know what they were doing or because it broke outside the warranty

http://www.dell.com/be/p/inspiron-15-35 ... 542-laptop

Even managed to find the Delgium version for you. We've also got a number of these at work running lab equipment and the only problems I've had were one of them with a stuffed Windows install and 4 others went for a swim so nothing at all to do with the hardware!

[Mr. Johnson]

ta!

[buzzmong]

That's good shout. Dell still make good laptops. I sort of miss the one I had at my last job.
If you're going to use it on a desk, don't be afraid to get a proper dock for it, they're quite handy.

[Mr. Johnson]

So we still haven't got a new laptop but we did have a look around in the shops to get a better idea of what Mrs. J wanted, and she's shown great interest into one of those newfangled keyboard/tablet combo things. To me they seem a bit fiddly and too new (and probably overpriced) to be any good but I know too little about them to judge properly since I always eschew new things. Then again, she only really needs it to watch netflix and type up the occasional email or document.

Does anyone have any experience with these things? Any recommendations or criticisms? Is a laptop still the better choice?

Thanks in advance, techno bitches*!


*Sounds better than tech bitches, right?

[Joose]

It depends on exactly what the ratio of watching videos to typing you are talking about. If it is mostly for looking at the internet and watching Netflix with just the odd bit of short typing here and there then a tablet is definitely a good choice. I dont know if they are available in your strange and faraway land, but I've got a Hudl2 for pretty much exactly that, and it is fucking ace considering the pricetag.

If you wanted to do just a little bit more typing then couple any old bluetooth keyboard with it and you are good to go.

If you are looking at more than a little typing here and there then a laptop would be a much better option.

The more expensive wierdass things that look like a laptop that you can fold on top of itself in order to type... they seem like a bad idea on a budget. Trying to do everything well and stay inexpensive tends to go badly.

[Mr. Johnson]

Ideally it would be a powerful enough tablet to last a few years and have a fair bit of storage space, since like you said we could probably attach a bluetooth keyboard and it would be suitable. Any suggestions for a decent, powerful tablet? It doesn't have to be enormous but a bit of screen size is nice (TWSS).